Young Elizabeth
Before considering the content of the book, I’d just like to note my appreciation of its physical nature. The quality of the paper is good, the margins are a decent depth, and the font is readable. This all adds to the pleasure of reading a solid piece of research.
And the research is very wide-ranging. The use of accounts, household books, and other administrative archives is becoming more popular as researchers seek to deepen our knowledge of history beyond just the headline events. This has paid dividends in this case. Tallis has mined the minutiae of Elizabeth’s household expenses to understand her everyday life during the reigns of her siblings. This is useful because what an individual spends their money on can be indicative of their approach to many other aspects of life. Elizabeth understood her role as a great lady – there are records of her tipping servants on visits, being treated to musical entertainments, and receiving gifts from courtiers. These were all important aspects of building a network of friends and supporters. I love this type of detail because it gives a concreteness to historical analysis.
Elizabeth is unlikely to have remembered her mother in person, since she was less than three when Anne Boleyn was executed. While it is clear that in later life she honoured Anne’s memory, her filial affections were bestowed on her governess, Katherine Champernowne, later Ashley, and most importantly, on her stepmother, Katherine Parr. Tallis traces the warm relationship between Elizabeth and both of these Katherines in detail. In particular, she shows how not only how Katherine’s religious outlook influenced her stepdaughter, but also how Katherine’s affection gave the young girl some emotional stability. The emotional roller-coaster that Elizabeth was then swept up in when Katherine’s fourth husband, Thomas Seymour made advances to the fourteen-year-old girl is handled sensitively, with more detail about what occurred than biographies that are covering the whole of Elizabeth’s life.
As her brother Edward’s reign progressed, Elizabeth was in high favour – a situation that was also the case in the early days of Mary’s reign. However, the relationship between the half-sisters soured when a plot emerged to replace Mary with Elizabeth. Tallis makes a judicious assessment of how much Elizabeth knew about either Wyatt’s machinations, or later, those of Henry Dudley, in advance.
By the time of her accession, Elizabeth had proved herself a shrewd politician, moulded by a difficult youth, and with emotional scars that perhaps would never entirely heal. This book is an excellent analysis of these formative years.
